Thursday, March 19, 2009

Pagination #1

I'm going to start an ongoing series on pagination. i know, it's not that sexy but every time I need to design one i tend to have to rethink it all over again and then find examples to plead my case with my graphic designers.


Bad:Why? because the easiest thing to click on is "Last >>" but this isn't the most desired link. It takes some focused mousing to click the little 1 2 3 4 5 or the >> next arrows, all of which are the more likely desired links.

It is showing which page you are on and how many total pages their are so they get a bonus points for that.


Better and Interesting:
The Next and Previous buttons are easy to click, although I still think the Beginning and Last links shouldn't be equally weighted to the Next and Previous, but a good argument could be made depending on the content (and it looks nice).

What I really like about this, is being able to just type in the page you want to jump to. So many pagination designs will only show you the next 3-5 pages (see above) so if you want to jump way a head, to say 17 you have to perform a few annoying clicks.

3 comments:

Anonymous March 24, 2009 at 11:08 AM  

Great idea! I wholly support your quest for better pagination.

Keep exposing those bad practices so we can learn and understand when is the appropriate time to use which implementation.

Thanks for sharing! =)

Steve Moseley March 25, 2009 at 9:15 PM  

That is a much better example. I know the circles are small already, but I wonder if making the "1st" and "last" links slightly smaller would emphasize the "next" and "previous" buttons more? Just a thought.

Would to to hear if you come up with anymore thoughts on this. As it stands, pagination isn't very user-friendly.

Thanks!

tyesha March 25, 2009 at 10:07 PM  

Good idea Steve. I think visually it looks nice all the same size but functionally so that could be an improvement. it's always a balance right? I'll do another post on this soon. send me any you find!

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